Self-Expression
by Dame March Dolcetto
Summary: In which a Dragon and his Dragonlord have a conversation about his Dragonlord's face. The Dragonlord is not amused. Written in light of the June 14, 2017 Design Notes.


**In honor of the June 14 DNs, have a fanfic I rushed through in a fit of giggles. Andre/Andy is the dragon. Riese is his Dragonlord. These specific versions are the only things I own that are mentioned in this fanfic. Enjoy.**

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She finished off the last of the tuskmongers with a quick Dragon's Soul, blasting the monster back into a tree with a great torrent of elemental energy then sighing with relief when she saw the beast finally fall. It had been a long day's work but with this quest completed, she was finally free to go.

Yawning widely, she made her way over to where she saw the monster give out its final breaths, sheathing the blade in her hand as she did so. With this, all she had to do now was to go, get the beast over to the butcher's, and she was free to go back home and get some actual sleep. For the first time in what felt like _weeks_ , she might actually be able to get home by dinner time. Maybe she could even go to bed _early_ for once.

She grinned at the thought.

Then she heard a loud gasp.

"By the Avatars..."

She turned back to see her dragon gaping at her, red eyes nearly bugging out of their sockets as he stared. She could feel his shock at the corners of her own consciousness, leaking through their connection.

Her smile fell and her hand fell instinctively to the hilt of her blade, eyes darting once more to their surroundings. When she found nothing amiss, she turned to him, a questioning looking on her face, though her hand never drifted away from her blade. "Andy? Are you alright? What's wrong? What is it?"

He was still staring at her. Through their bond, though what she could sense was limited given that he himself was not reciprocating the mental connection, she could still feel his shock. "Riese," he breathed, still-wide-eyed. "You're - you're _smiling_."

Concern turned to confusion as she stared at him. "Well, yeah. That's what I do when I'm, y'know, happy."

He gaped. "No it's _not_! You never smile when you're happy!"

She blinked. "... huh?"

"Haven't you noticed?" Her dragon was staring at her. "You never smile! Heck, you never even _move_ your mouth when you talk! Not as Dragonlord, at least! Now, you're - you're _smiling_ and-and I can see your teeth and - it's weird!"

She blinked for a few seconds at that. Her jaw dropped for a few seconds as she tried to find the words to speak but, somehow, none came to her.

"See!?" Her dragon really was staring now. His shock was palpable through their bond, even though she wasn't currently trying to hear through it. "Your mouth! It's _moving_! It's _open! I can see your teeth!_ "

"W-well, yes," she stammered. "That's - that's generally what happens when people _talk_. Their - their mouths open and sound comes out - what are you even _talking_ about?!"

"But - don't you see?" With a flap or two of his wings, he brought himself up to her eye level, hovering in place as he tried to find a way to say the words properly. "Normal people's mouths - _their_ mouths would move when they talked and smiled but-but you?! _Your_ mouth - you used to - you used to never move or open your mouth when you talked! It was always just - you would always just talk with your mouth closed. I always thought you were practicing your ventriloquism or something!"

"A-andy - " she tried to interject. "I've always been opening my - "

"I mean, it wasn't until you started using Cryptic that I'd ever even _seen_ your mouth moving!" he ranted, either ignoring her entirely or too caught up in his tirade to do notice her attempts at interruption. He leapt up onto her shoulders, slithering onto his usual place about her neck so that he could better look her in the face. "And I honestly thought those were just illusions you were using to keep the bad guys off your trail and - and - your _eyes_!" The dragon coiled around her neck to look her in the eye, making her flinch back on instinct under the intensity of his gaze. "They - they're _purple_ now! Aren't your eyes blue?

"It's just the light, Andy," she tried to say, trying in vain to get him off her shoulders only for the stubborn dragon to refuse to budge from his position, his red eyes narrowing into slits as he stared into the purple of her eyes. "My eyes are _gray_ , remember?"

"What?" Her dragon stared at her as if she'd just declared her undying love for the Rose, being stuck in ice blocks, and the smell of schnozzberries. "No, they're not. They're blue. I mean - " the dragon considered it for a bit. "They're _usually_ blue. I mean, when you're in Cryptic, they're usually blue though, sometimes, they're purple. They're blue when you're in Master Soulweaver, too, and in your new Ranger clothes, your new Pirate gear, your old Rogue leathers - they're blue almost _all_ the time!"

She sighed. "Andy..." she began, a nerve in her forehead twitching rather remarkably visibly. Neither of her hands hovered near either of her weapons now. Her left hand was now comfortably settled in the space between her eyebrows as she pinched at the bridge of her nose, the eyes around them scrunched tightly shut, while her right found a suitable position at its respective hip, her gauntleted-fingers bunching the dragonscale-mail situated there.

"But in Archivist, your eyes are green," he continues, launching off of her shoulder to fly in agitated circles about her head, ignoring how what he could sense of his Dragonlord's thoughts were ones now contemplating whether smacking him over the head with her shield would let them all go home this much faster. "Not blue-green either, just green-green. Other times, your eyes are just _black_ \- in Technomancer, Togslayer..." he paused. "Other classes that start with a 'T'..."

"I don't have any more classes that start with a 'T'," she pointed out, voice half a sigh.

"But I've _never_ seen you with gray eyes," he finished, apparently content to ignore his increasingly irritated Dragonlord.

"That's because the color changes in the light," she said irritably. "Blue in the sunlight, black in the shade, gray's an eye color that looks different with every lighting - honestly, you didn't know that?"

"How do you explain gold then?" He's looking defiantly up at her now, flying in place with decidedly disgruntled flaps of his wings. "Your eyes, they're _gold_ when you're in Paladin."

"That's just because of Paladin's Light magic," she answered dismissively. "I channel Light magic directly into my body when I use Paladin so it's not _that_ unusual that it'd have some kind of side effect. Honestly, having it just be yellow eyes is actually pretty good."

"That's just - what about Necromancer then?!" he backtracked, his hovering growing decidedly more agitated. "Or - or Pyromancer or Death Knight or - "

"Necrotic energy, side-effect of Pyronomicon, Death Knight's corrupted magic, need I go on?"

The dragon sputtered. "You - your eyes aren't the issue here! The real issue here is your _mouth!_ _Why is it moving?!"_

"Because I'm _talking_ and I need to _open my mouth to speak?"_ she burst out, sounding more than a little frustrated. "Honestly, what's gotten into you?"

"Me?!" Her dragon sputtered with outrage. "What's gotten into _you!?_ Your mouth is moving! You _used to never have to! None_ of you have! _None_ of the girl heroes ever used to open their mouths; they never needed to to yell at people before!

This time, it was she who sputtered. "What is _that_ supposed to mean?" she demanded hotly, feeling that the statement was somehow outrageous though, in all honesty, she really wasn't sure how, what with all his talk about mouths, eyes, and how hers were moving. "Are you trying to imply something here?!"

"Wh - no! I wasn't trying to imply anything about girls or - " he paused for breath, inhaling once deeply before shooting off again. "- Look, I'm just, it's your mouth, why is it moving now? I've never seen it move until - until Cryptic and Pyromancer and - and Master Soulweaver and your all your other new classes! I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that!" he hastened to add. "Even if your mouth never... seemed to move before, I thought you were pretty expressive. I mean, you have _really_ expressive eyebrows; your angry eyebrows were very angry eyebrows and your shocked eyebrows were about the same but...Why? Why is it now that your mouth - why are you.."

She took a deep breath, counted to ten very, very quickly, then released it in a single, loud exhale. "Andy, look, are you tired?" Her voice was calm now. Her hands were now held folded together, hands clasped, the otherwise almost matriarchal-seeming aura of the pose somewhat offset by the fact that she was in full-body armor and the fact that a gigantic shield was strapped just above the wrist of one of said hands. "It's been a long day, hasn't it? Are you sure you're... thinking properly?"

He opened his mouth to protest his state of mind when he noted her expression, how her eyes were narrowed just the slightest bit, how her mouth, while closed as he oft remembered it, was a thin, tiny dark slash in the set of her face. His first thought upon seeing her expression might have been _"oh, Avatars, her mouth shrunk! It SHRUNK! IT CAN SHRINK!"_ but his second definitely revolved around the new bags of Gourmet Dragon Chow she'd bought for his birthday that were currently inside her inventory and were, therefore, currently in danger 'accidentally' being set on fire in a tragic accident involving her Dragonlord's ability, Fire Dragon Spirit. "... Maybe," he said shiftily. "Maybe some Gourmet Dragon Chow would help me think straight?" he added hopefully.

"Maybe it will," she said, eyes darting up in mock contemplation (nearly making him jolt in the process because her _EYES! They were MOVING!_ ) before darting back down to meet his, one corner of her lip curling up in a smirk (that similarly also nearly made him jolt because _her mouth! She was SMIRKING! He had never EVER seen her make that expression before!_ ). "When we get home, maybe I could let you have a bite? Just to clear your head before we continue this... talk about my mouth?"

His eyes widened. The bribery was obvious but... Gourmet Dragon Chow. No sane dragon could resist the allure of Fresc-Os.

Really now. It was just her face. Her now... _expressive_ face. Who cared, really, why she could now show expression as a Dragonlord when she'd never been able to before? Certainly not him, certainly not the Fresc-Os he may or may not be receiving...

"M-maybe," he managed. "We were just about to go home now, right?"

"We were, were we not?" she echoed, looking at him from the corner of her eye (another one of those new expressions that was cause for jolt). Her Dragon Amulet glinted at the base of her neck and he can feel a familiar tug at his heart. "We'll be going, now, then? We'll talk about my mouth later, yes?"

If by yes, she meant never then yes. However, a yes that meant never was nothing compared to a bite of sweet, delicious Fresc-Os fresh from the box. "Yes," he said agreeably, accepting the warmth in his chest and allowing it to envelop him even as his Dragonlord's newest expression when she looked at him (a tiny, toothy, _devious_ grin _)_ made him jolt at how unexpected it was from his normally non-expressive Dragonlord. "We'll talk later."

Though he could not see it, what with his Dragonlord-turned-Dragonrider perched atop his now-Titanized back, she grinned, the expression staying even as they took to the skies. "Yes. Later, indeed."

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 **Fun fact: I honest to God thought that expressive faces were a DA-only feature for the longest time. Since I only had female characters until the day I upgraded my account, I honestly didn't think the Hero's mouth could move at all.**

 **I wonder, if in the future, people will read this and wonder what the heck I'm talking about, all Heroes have expressive faces, etc. etc.**

 **Welp. T'would be interesting if that happened. Reviews are appreciated, yo.**


End file.
